This invention relates generally to medical imaging, and more particularly, to positioning imaging components around a patient.
Diagnostic medical imaging requires accurate positioning of imaging equipment around a patient. Depending on the size and complexity of the equipment, the equipment can be positioned manually (e.g. dental X-rays) or through motorization of the equipment. With manual positioning, the operator has full control over the device being positioned and is restricted only by the range of motion of the equipment. Moreover, manually moving equipment is intuitive since one merely pushes and pulls the equipment into the desired location.
Some imaging equipment is motorized in order to help the operator move heavier equipment, or to facilitate advanced procedures in which the equipment must be precisely positioned or moved during an imaging procedure. The user device for control of larger motorized equipment typically is a joystick or a force input device (e.g. a spring-loaded handle with 1 to 3 degrees of freedom that measures the force applied to the handle). The joystick or force input devices are often located remotely from the equipment (e.g. on a user control panel) and have no particular relationship to the geometry of the machine. For example, left-right motion of the joystick may result in something other than left-right motion of the machine. Force input devices are sometimes attached directly to the device being controlled, and a force applied to the input device results in machine motion in the same direction as the applied force and a magnitude commensurate with the applied force.
In screening applications (e.g. mammography), there is a high-throughput of patients per day. Minimizing the time required for a particular exam, thus maximizing equipment and operator productivity, is highly desirable. In interventional applications (e.g. vascular X-ray), focused attention is on the patient and the medical procedure, and the control of the imaging device should be as intuitive, effortless, and efficient as possible.